Headway Technology, a business division of the AVNET, is Europe's premier specialist distributor for document management and storage products.

Sourcing only 'best of breed' products from top class manufacturers, Headway and its associated companies are well positioned to meet the increasing requirements of the information management marketplace. Headway Technology is unique in the industry operating a truly independent distribution model, as we do not own or sell software solutions. Instead we work closely with System Integrators & Solution Providers to ensure that our customers receive independent advice.

Our product portfolio includes document capture software, scanners, ultra density optical (UDO), RAID storage hardware and software, disk to disk backup solutions, e-mail archiving, development toolkits including image compression techniques and unique display subsystems.

Also providing in-house training as well as "free consultancy" and maintenance services, Headway are able to pass on the wealth of our experience.

Headway Technology Group sources only 'best of breed' products from leading manufacturers such as Fujitsu, Kodak, Hewlet Packard, Plasmon, and Canon. The group's product portfolio includes colour and monochrome scanners, document capture software, CD, DVD and optical jukeboxes, UDO drives now available, storage management software, RAID, tape back-up solutions, image compression software, and display subsystems.

Through world-wide contacts and very close relationships with its supplier and customer bases, Headway, which has been specialising in imaging since its conception on a PC platform in 1985, enjoys an enviable market knowledge and understanding of the secondary markets and industry trends.

This has helped the group establish an excellent reputation accredited by manufacturers as the most effective Value Added Distributor in the document management and workflow market today.

Headway Technology Group's strength is in Europe with over 22 group locations strategically placed for our clients' convenience. In addition the group has associated companies in South Africa and Singapore. Headway Technology Group specialist IT centres are located in key European cities to support its customer needs, whether for single locations or pan-European document management roll-out.

Headway Technology Group is the leading independent supplier of document imaging and data management products, as it is our policy never to compete with our customers by owning any product.

Headway Technology Group continues to deliver innovative solutions for data extraction and document capture.

What is Data Extraction? – Data Extraction is the ability convert text from a document captured in digital form and export that text to a database. Headway Technology Group are able to supply InputAccel Express which is a powerful data extraction/document capture software package. This information is then used to index the document for later retrieval or to store the complete document content for use with workflow systems or data mining applications.

What is document capture? – Document capture is the conversion of paper documents into digital images. The digital image is then stored along with an index that is either keyed from the document or extracted automatically (see Data Extraction above).

Headway Technology Group brings you the choice between Colour or Bi-tonal scanning.

The function of a document scanner is to convert a document into digital image. When choosing a scanner, a number of factors need to be considered. These include, paper size (typically A3 or A4), resolution required, scanning speed, paper handling, daily throughput and the required capture/output format (ie colour, grayscale or bi-tonal).

One of the most important considerations is the scanning speed required for the application. It is wise to bear in mind, however, that no scanner is designed to work for eight hours a day non-stop, they all have their own recommended duty cycles. Also in critical situations where no "down time" is permissible, it may be advisable to spread the load over two slower scanners, thereby minimising the impact of a failure should one occur. In the event of a failure your Headway Technology Group Imagecare maintenance support will be critical in the smooth return to production.

The initial decision of colour scanning or bi-tonal scanning will have significant impact when choosing the preferred resolution, it is best to go for the minimum that your particular application dictates. If a scan head has to scan 400 lines in every inch (400 dpi) it will take longer than it does to scan 200 lines to the inch (200 dpi). Generally the higher the resolution that a scanner scans at, the slower the throughput with colour being considerably slower than bi-tonal. However the modern scanners now available from Kodak, Bowe Bell+ Howell and Fujitsu are able to produce colour at the speed of black and white.

The other consideration is the storage space required for these images. Storage overheads are dependant on the resolution of the image - doubling the resolution quadruples the file size. As a general rule, for most bi-tonal applications, with the exception of ICR, a resolution of 200 dpi is quite adequate. The resolution required by most ICR packages is 300 dpi.

If you are choosing a bi-tonal scanner and have various document types with varying image quality, then you need to look at different mechanisms for ensuring the best quality image is captured, such I-Thresholding with Perfect Page from Kodak or VRS (Virtual ReScan) from Kofax. In essence both technologies offer the same benefits, the main difference being that Kodak operate on the principal of not stopping the scanner and adjusting the quality on the fly, whereas Kofax have a pop up interface to allow the user to dynamically adjust an image that falls outside of a preset quality variance. Why not arrange to bring your documents to our showroom at Headway House and try them on both systems.

Colour scanning adds an overhead per image that until now has meant that it is not practical to store or retrieve colour images (Ask any IT manager if he wants to ship large file sizes around his network all day). Headway Technology Group's partnership with Lizardtech and the djvu file compression format now means that we can deliver a full colour image at the size of its bi-tonal counterpart. The ability to capture documents (and reproduce if necessary) as we see them in everyday life rather than a bi-tonal rendition is the same as having the original document or a photocopy for your files. We all prefer the original, it is easier to read, our eyes recognise most document types by colour. Colour scanning means that dynamic thresholding/ contrast adjustment etc become a thing of the past, as the scanner has captured a true copy of the document.

Will colour slow your scanning throughput? The answer there obviously depends on the documents that you are scanning, if the documents are colour to start with then the answer is probably "No". With batches of mixed colour documents, it is almost inevitable that a bi-tonal scanner will need the contrast and thresholding adjusted to cope with all the variations, whereas a colour scanner will capture all the colours and now deliver the same throughput in colour or Black and white which means that it will probably be faster to capture in colour.

Most image scanners have an Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) which allows operators to load a large number of documents into the scanner at one time. This paper handling feature is extremely important. For documents that are outside the specification of the feeder, or are extremely fragile, it becomes necessary to scan them on a flatbed which significantly slows down the entire scanning process. Lastly, consideration needs to be given to which interface is required. Generally, the choice is either a SCSI or video interface.

The video interface (Headway Technology Group supply and recommend Kofax Adrenaline video boards) requires a separately purchased document processing board but provides many benefits over SCSI. These boards can perform various image processing functions, such as de-skew, noise removal, bar-code reading and OCR, etc. They also allow such processor intensive functionality to be carried out independent of the systems main processor, thereby eliminating the possibility of any speed degradation of the system when performing these functions.

SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) is an industry standard interface (Headway Technology Group supply and recommend Adaptec or Kofax Adrenaline SCSI boards) which can be cheap to implement and versatile by the fact that a number of devices such as scanners and storage products can be connected, or 'daisy chained', to one SCSI interface. When using most of the SCSI interfaces currently available, functions such as image processing are carried out by the main system processor which could lead to speed degradation, however, with the speed of modern processors, this is unlikely.

Headway Technology Group will be glad to open our demonstration room to you and assist you in choosing the right scanner for you needs. Why not bring your documents along and try out all of the scanners using the latest technology. Displays – LCD flatpanels, Fujitsu Plasmavision and plasma displays.
Display sub-systems are one of the least understood of all imaging peripherals. On first consideration most people think of a document display sub-system as just a simple display. When studied in more detail the display can affect user productivity by as much as 30%. This obviously means that selecting the correct display can substantially improve the usability, and therefore the value, of any imaging system.

Important considerations when selecting a document display:
1. High Resolution - it is vital to ensure that any document display is easily readable by providing the user with sufficient detail. Typically on a 21" screen, a resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels will provide a 120 dot per inch image. This is generally considered appropriate for most document imaging applications.
2. Refresh Rates - this refers to the rate at which the displayed image is refreshed on the screen (measured in Hz). The higher the number of refreshes per second, the better, as it has a significant impact on image quality with low rates causing display flicker and even fuzziness. In general terms users will stop perceiving flicker at about 85 Hz. However the user still derives benefits from higher rates, and although the difference is not easily visible, it still decreases user fatigue.
High refresh/high resolution display systems are initially perceived as a high cost component within a document imaging system. But given the cost of the number of hours lost per year due to reduced user productivity when using a standard VGA or SuperVGA display solution, these high performance displays can represent a significant overall cost saving.
3. Colour or black and white - from a technology standpoint black and white displays will always produce a crisper image than that of a similar resolution colour display. Therefore, it is best to look for a vendor that can provide both high resolution colour and greyscale solutions.
4. Energy saving features - on large installations the display can represent a significant proportion of the total power consumption. As power saving features can now offer significant savings, it is always advisable to look for displays offering the Energy Star™ or equivalent feature.
Now we are in the new Millennium, it is quite clear that the importance of storage is growing rapidly, as is the usage of storage and the choices available to the user. No longer will the purchase of storage be left to the last minute. It will become an essential part of any IT strategy and its purchase will need as much planning as any other part of an enterprise's IT spend. Wrong or swiftly made decisions could cause major repercussions.

Data storage – SAN / NAS

It is predicted that procurement of storage will take up some 70% of IT spend from the year 2000 onwards. It is essential, therefore, that all people involved in specifying storage should have a good understanding of all the issues involved and the technologies and configurations available to them. The challenges to enterprises are manifold: Data is now being stored and accessed morning, noon and night. This data must always be available to all authorised users, must be stored securely and on cost-effective media.

Networks are growing and becoming more complex - a range of network topologies, protocols and operating systems in differing geographical locations, accessed by a multitude of different platforms are all possible. Anyone in any part of the network requires access to the same data.
Finally, all this data must be protected at all costs. A data protection strategy must ensure that mission critical data is constantly available and in the event of disaster can be quickly restored.

There are many new storage concepts becoming available to users. Two such configurations are Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Storage Area Networks (SAN). These are in addition to Direct Attached Storage which has been with us for many years.

Direct Attached Storage is the traditional model, in use throughout the Document Management and general data archive industry. Here, storage devices are directly connected (via SCSI or Fibre Channel) to a server, which is undertaking either general network functions, or better, is a dedicated storage management unit. In conjunction with software loaded on the server, the contents of the attached storage device are made available to all on the network. Headway Technology Group offers optical jukeboxes from Hewlett-Packard and Plasmon; RAID units from Fujitsu, and Sagitta; and finally CD/DVD towers. Our expertise in understanding and being able to help specify appropriate software is available to our customers at all times. Typical vendors are EMC, QStar, K-Par, and Pegasus.

Network Attached Storage enables you to add storage devices to a network just by plugging the device directly into the network itself. The advantage is that storage can be added, expanded, reconfigured or removed from a network without affecting the network itself, or any server on the network. Here, Headway Technology Group offers CD/DVD Towers with the AXIS integrated server unit, and products like Plasmon's NetReady unit, which allow larger optical units to be easily added to a network.

Finally the newest configuration on the market - SANs. The Storage Area Network is an additional network, independent of the production network that is purely used to offer file and print services. It allows storage to be shared between different servers and promises high system availability, gigabit speed data connectivity and extensive fault tolerance. One major application area is the ability to back up servers on a network separate to the production network. This means backup can be run at any time of day, as often as required, without affecting standard network traffic. SANs are utilising fibre channel technology which offers redundancy, speed, resilience and distance. There are still issues to be addressed such as how to deal with large libraries; how to resolve differences in the way that different operating systems and platforms manage data and sharing of devices and so on, but fibre channel and SANs are here to stay.
Headway Technology Group can offer a full Storage Area Network consultancy service, in conjunction with its partner Sagitta, which includes complete site surveys, planning of all fibre channel cabling and hardware and connectivity and control of all suitable storage devices. In addition, we have storage products with fibre channel interfaces from not only Sagitta but also from Hewlett-Packard and Quantum|ATL.

Fujitsu & Headway Technology Group Ltd have joined forces to develop a new Storage Area Network that has been designed with scalability and cost justification in mind. nStor RAID offers a Fibre to Fibre Channel based storage solutions and is universally acknowledged as offering the highest availability, performance and scalability of any storage solution. An nStor RAID solution provides ALL of the Hardware and Software components required to upgrade your existing server(s) to a Fibre channel based SAN (Storage Area Network) allowing you to centrally store and manage all of your data. The combination of Host Bus Adaptor, Enclosure, RAID controller, Hard Disk Drives and storage management software provide unparalleled data throughput, high-availability data protection and built in volume sharing at an unbeatable price point. Fujitsu is the Number 1 supplier for mid-range Scanners and is also an industry leader in the Enterprise storage market. nStor RAID is a complimentary storage solution for Fujitsu's scanners, utilising its wealth of experience in the document management and storage markets.

Hardware Overview
2U Rackmount enclosure (Tower option) with redundant / hot swap dual PSUs, Fan. Dual Host I/O cards provide seamless RAID controller replacement without disrupting the data path, Dual Disk I/O cards allow 7 additional enclosures to be daisy chained to the original configuration (96 x 147 GB = 14 TB), Single Port Host Bus Adaptor (Dual port option) with ability to add dual HBA's per server(s) (option), Dual Port RAID Controller with 512 MB Cache (Dual processor / 1 GB Cache option) with ability to integrate 2 controllers per enclosure (option).

Software Overview
StorView 'Local' provides a web-based user friendly GUI to allow simple and quick storage configuration and management that can be viewed with a web browser on a local server.
An optional upgrade to 'Global' StorView provides all of the 'Local' features with additional remote configuration and management together with E-Mail / SNMP / Call Home notification and Server redundancy.
2 Gb Fibre (RAID Controller) to Fibre (Hard Disk Drives)
2U (3.5) Rackmount enclosure (Tower Option)
12 Bay enclosure delivers up to 1.75 TB (12 x 147 GB)
7 expansion enclosures delivers up to 14 TB (96 x 147 GB)
Single Port Host Bus Adaptor (Dual Port option)
Dual Port Raid Controllers with 512 MB Cache (Dual processor / 1 GB Cache option)
Storage Management Software for configuration and monitoring (Global option)
Redundant / hot-swap power, cooling and storage
Redundant HBA, Raid Controller & Storage Management Software options

In terms of storage technology, Magneto Optical still rules for most document archival applications. Its combination of resilient, permanent, portable media with mature drive and autochanger technology still offers the best approach for anyone wanting near-line storage, with access times of a few seconds and proven media lifetimes. This coming year will see yet another increase in media storage capacity from the current 5.2 GB to 9.1 GB.

A new arrival is DVD, the long awaited replacement for CD. DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) is readily available in most new PCs in the form of a DVD-ROM reader. DVD readers are able to read discs of up to 4.7 GB in capacity. Capacities of around 18 GB are possible with double sided and double layer discs. Software to drive DVD jukeboxes is available from OTG and K-Par. The industry still seems to be divided in terms of recording formats - there are at least three available, all incompatible and very few supported in current and older DVD readers. In time, these issues will undoubtedly be resolved and DVD will claim its place at the low end of automated near-line storage.

New to Headway Technology Group is Plasmon's Infinity Range of 12" WORM format products. This range was purchased by Plasmon from Philips LMS, together with the entire complementary jukebox range from Cygnet. Headway Technology Group can therefore offer the full range of 12" WORM products from single 12 GB drives, through the 6-disk Rapidchanger (and the 12 disk Dual Rapidchanger) to jukeboxes holding up to 4 TB of data (using the new 30 GB 8000-series drive products). These products have all found favour in the financial marketplace where the permanent nature of the WORM recording process, together with the fact that the drive reads both sides of the disk at the same time, so the full capacity is available to users, offers capabilities not found in any other technology.

Headway Technology Group has partnered with Sagitta to offer their high performance range of RAID units. Sagitta uses a wide range of high performance storage area network products to enable solutions to be created that solve real business issues. Sagitta is not limited to any product but will work with the best components to deliver the right solution. Ask Headway Technology Group for details of all the options available.
Safeguarding your data is now an essential part of IT strategy - yet it is surprising how many companies do not have an effective back-up strategy in place. Tape technology continues to surprise with new formats appearing almost monthly it seems. The current primary contenders are DAT (Digital Audio Tape) whose DDS format is ideal for backing up data in small to medium enterprises; and DLT (Digital Linear Tape) for the vast majority of larger enterprises. Headway Technology Group has teamed up with UK-based Quantum|ATL to offer their highly modular range of DLT tape libraries varying in capacity from 200 GB to 7 TB. The libraries can be used singly, or linked together in a stack. Future generations of tape drive technology such as S-DLT and LTO will be able to be used in these libraries.

Hewlett-Packard's range of single drives, autochangers and libraries offer automated backup or archival of up to 4.8 TB of data. Watch out for HP's LTO format soon.
Headway Technology Group offers OTG's DiskXtender and Q-Star's HSM software for tape archival applications.
In conclusion, Headway Technology Group has the product range and expertise to solve the vast majority of your storage requirements and will continue to ensure that only market leading and technologically superior products are offered to its customers. Although most of the products that Headway Technology Group offers are customer installable, it is always worthwhile to consider Headway Technology Group installation services. For a relatively small price, our experienced engineers can visit your site and install all hardware and software. They can then use their experience to configure server, operating system and software for optimum operation. Finally, they can then train operators, administrators and users on the most effective way to use their new storage system.
Please also ensure that you have ordered the most appropriate warranty services with your purchases. Headway Technology Group Sales staff will discuss all options with you, but products can differ substantially in terms of warranty provision.

Headway Technology Group supply a wide range of development toolkits and component products for image capture, display, enhancement, recognition, data extraction and distribution.
The best toolkits and components for existing and emerging technologies This section of the Headway Technology Group Product Guide contains a range of 'Best of Breed' products which give systems integrators and developers the tools to build tailored solutions for their customers. There are components here which provide the functionality to drive scanners, display images and other files, enhance images and read data from them using Barcode, Optical Character Recognition, Intelligent Character Recognition and Optical Mark Recognition in various combinations. There are also components for integrating storage via a jukebox and of course to work over the internet.

The majority of these tools are designed as ActiveX controls for use in Visual Basic, Visual C++, Delphi and many other visual development environments. The ActiveX interface is ideal for Rapid Application Development where components from several sources are assembled to produce solutions and also for distributed imaging based primarily on Microsoft Internet Information Server Active Pages. Some of these components are also available in other formats such as C source code, DLL, and Java for developers who need this.

There is a great deal of choice with viewing components which provide everything from basic display of image files to support for very large files, multiple formats, accelerated display and zooming, scale to grey to improve the legibility of black and white images on screen. Annotations are supported with some viewers where notes, comments, arrows and highlight are overlaid on an image. With the huge shift toward web based imaging there are products here designed especially to work in this environment and available as plug-ins to the browsers, server based Java applets and ActiveX controls. These provide all the functionality of a traditional viewing application including annotation but are designed to reduce network traffic and to work from a web server.

Images can be captured from a wide range of scanners using TWAIN, ISIS and high performance image processing boards, via the web, from alternative TWAIN sources such as digital cameras, and other sources of image files such as fax gateways.

Image Processing can be easily integrated into any solution to provide everything from a simple deskew to very powerful noise, shade and line removal, and character enhancement options designed to make OCR and other recognition more accurate. These functions are no longer limited to solutions based on interface boards but are available as pure software components which exploit the latest high performance computers, and their functionality is now extending to sophisticated manipulation of colour and grey scale images.

Increasingly it is not sufficient to merely capture an image, it needs to be indexed before it can be stored so automatic data capture utilising technologies for forms recognition and registration, OCR, ICR, Barcode and OMR are vital for producing fast and accurate solutions. These are available as components or as part of a configurable capture and index system. The final part of the jigsaw is storage and retrieval of files which is where the components to manage a jukebox come in. These allow programmatic control of the jukebox so that sophisticated pre fetch and retrieval methods can be implemented such that users are not delayed because a file is not immediately available.

Headway Technology Group are committed to supplying the best toolkits and components for existing and emerging technologies. The following pages contain may examples of these tools which can be combined to deliver new applications or to supplement existing ones.

ImageCare maintenance Note: The Standard Manufacturers Warranty is often insufficient for "Mission Critical" installations By their very nature, most Document Management Installations should be classed as "Mission Critical". One cannot rely on the manufacturer warranty alone as some products are only return to base, and in some instances they are parts only! Even where manufacturers bundle on-site warranty, in most cases it is a “next day” response with no targeted fix times.

Will this be sufficient for your customers operations? Headway Technology, are able to offer the Convenience and Economies that a single source maintenance contract can provide by using a combination of direct Technical Support, Manufacturers Service Centres and Third Party Service Providers.

The single contract is designed to cover multi-vendor, multi-product, and multi-media sites. Headway Technology and its Third Party Service Providers are highly experienced in both on-site and remote network support and installation.

All the engineering staff involved in providing the services detailed below are manufacturer trained and are very experienced in supporting networked systems within an imaging environment.
The Headway Technology Group ImageCare Service contract offers the following benefits:

• Economies - Reduced administrative effort
• Convenience - Single contract for multi-vendor support
• Co-ordination of Specialist Sub-contractors
• Centralised Billing - Economies and Convenience
• Returned Materials Management
• Warranty Status and Repair Procedures
• National Access to Strategic Spares and Consumables
• Equipment Relocation and Technical Audit Services